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PAUL CLIFFORD
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.
This novel so far differs from the other fictions by the same author that
it seeks to draw its interest rather from practical than ideal sources.
Out of some twelve Novels or Romances, embracing, however inadequately, a
great variety of scene and character,--from "Pelham" to the "Pilgrims of
the Rhine," from "Rienzi" to the "Last Days of Pompeii,"--"Paul Clifford"
is the _only one_ in which a robber has been made the hero, or the
peculiar phases of life which he illustrates have been brought into any
prominent description.
Without pausing to inquire what realm of manners or what order of crime
and sorrow is open to art, and capable of administering to the proper
ends of fiction, I may be permitted to observe that the present subject
was selected, and the Novel written, with a twofold object: First, to
draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions; namely, a vicious
prison-discipline, and a sanguinary criminal code,--the habit of
corrupting the boy by the very punishment that ought to redeem him, and
then hanging the man at the first occasion, as the easiest way of getting
rid of our own blunders. Between the example of crime which the tyro
learns from the felons in the prison-yard, and the horrible levity with
which the mob gather round the drop at Newgate, there is a connection
which a writer may be pardoned for quitting loftier regions of
imagination to trace and to detect. So far this book is less a picture
of the king's highway than the law's royal road to the gallows,--a satire
on the short cut established between the House of Correction and the
Condemned Cell. A second and a lighter object in the novel of "Paul
Clifford" (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque or travesty in
the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially
different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of
the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant of the other.
The Supplementary Essays, entitled "Tomlinsoniana," which contain the
corollaries to various problems suggested in the Novel, have been
restored to the present edition.
CLIFTON, July 25, 1840.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1848.
Most men who with some earnestness of mind examine into the mysteries of
our social state will perhaps pass through that stage of self-education
in which this Novel was composed. The contrast between conventional
frauds, received as component parts of the great system of civilization,
and the less deceptive invasions of the laws which discriminate the
_meum_ from the _tuum_, is tempting to a satire that is not without its
justice. The tragic truths which lie hid in what I may call the
Philosophy of Circumstance strike through our philanthropy upon our
imagination. We see masses of our fellow-creatures the victims of
circumstances over which they had no control,--contaminated in infancy by
the example of parents, their intelligence either extinguished or turned
against them, according as the conscience is stifled in ignorance or
perverted to apologies for vice. A child who is cradled in ignominy,
whose schoolmaster is the felon, whose academy is the House of
Correction,--who breathes an atmosphere in which virtue is poisoned, to
which religion does not pierce,--becomes less a responsible and reasoning
human being than a wild beast which we suffer to range in the wilderness,
till it prowls near our homes, and we kill it in self-defence.
In this respect the Novel of "Paul Clifford" is a loud cry to society to
amend the circumstance,--to redeem the victim. It is an appeal from
Humanity to Law. And in this, if it could not pretend to influence or
guide the temper of the times, it was at least a foresign of a coming
change. Between the literature of imagination, and the practical
interests of a people, there is a harmony as complete as it is
mysterious. The heart of an author is the mirror of his age. The shadow
of the sun is cast on the still surface of literature long before the
light penetrates to law; but it is ever from the sun that the shadow
falls, and the moment we see the shadow we may be certain of the light.
Since this work was written, society has been busy with the evils in
which it was then silently acquiescent. The true movement of the last
fifteen years has been the progress of one idea,--Social Reform. There
it advances with steady and noiseless march behind every louder question
of constitutional change. Let us do justice to our time. There have
been periods of more brilliant action on the destinies of States, but
there is no time visible in History in which there was so earnest and
general a desire to improve the condition of the great body of the
people. In every circle of the community that healthful desire is astir.
It unites in one object men of parties the most opposed; it affords the
most attractive nucleus for public meetings; it has cleansed the
statute-book from blood; it is ridding the world of the hangman. It
animates the clergy of all sects in the remotest districts; it sets the
squire on improving cottages and parcelling out allotments. Schools rise
in every village; in books the lightest, the Grand Idea colours the page,
and bequeaths the moral. The Government alone (despite the professions
on which the present Ministry was founded) remains unpenetrated by the
common genius of the age; but on that question, with all the subtleties
it involves, and the experiments it demands,--not indeed according to the
dreams of an insane philosophy, but according to the immutable laws which
proportion the rewards of labour to the respect for property,--a
Government must be formed at last.
There is in this work a subtler question suggested, but not solved,--that
question which perplexes us in the generous ardour of our early
youth,--which, unsatisfactory as all metaphysics, we rather escape from
than decide as we advance in years; namely, make what laws we please, the
man who lives within the pale can be as bad as the man without. Compare
the Paul Clifford of the fiction with the William Brandon,--the hunted
son with the honoured father, the outcast of the law with the dispenser
of the law, the felon with the judge; and as at the last they front each
other,--one on the seat of justice, the other at the convict's bar,--who
can lay his hand on his heart and say that the Paul Clifford is a worse
man than the William Brandon.
There is no immorality in a truth that enforces this question; for it is
precisely those offences which society cannot interfere with that society
requires fiction to expose. Society is right, though youth is reluctant
to acknowledge it. Society can form only certain regulations necessary
for its self-defence,--the fewer the better,--punish those who invade,
leave unquestioned those who respect them. But fiction follows truth
into all the strongholds of convention; strikes through the disguise,
lifts the mask, bares the heart, and leaves a moral wherever it brands a
falsehood.
Out of this range of ideas the mind of the Author has, perhaps, emerged
into an atmosphere which he believes to be more congenial to Art. But he
can no more regret that he has passed through it than he can regret that
while he dwelt there his heart, like his years, was young. Sympathy with
the suffering that seems most actual, indignation at the frauds which
seem most received as virtues, are the natural emotions of youth, if
earnest. More sensible afterwards of the prerogatives, as of the
elements, of Art, the Author, at least, seeks to escape where the man may
not, and look on the practical world through the serener one of the
ideal.
With the completion of this work closed an era in the writer's
self-education. From "Pelham" to "Paul Clifford" (four fictions, all
written at a very early age), the Author rather observes than imagines;
rather deals with the ordinary surface of human life than attempts,
however humbly, to soar above it or to dive beneath. From depicting in
"Paul Clifford" the errors of society, it was almost the natural progress
of reflection to pass to those which swell to crime in the solitary human
heart,--from the bold and open evils that spring from ignorance and
example, to track those that lie coiled in the entanglements of refining
knowledge and speculative pride. Looking back at this distance of years,
I can see as clearly as if mapped before me, the paths which led across
the boundary of invention from "Paul Clifford" to "Eugene Aram." And,
that last work done, no less clearly can I see where the first gleams
from a fairer fancy broke upon my way, and rested on those more ideal
images which I sought with a feeble hand to transfer to the "Pilgrims of
the Rhine" and the "Last Days of Pompeii." We authors, like the Children
in the Fable, track our journey through the maze by the pebbles which we
strew along the path. From others who wander after us, they may attract
no notice, or, if noticed, seem to them but scattered by the caprice of
chance; but we, when our memory would retrace our steps, review in the
humble stones the witnesses of our progress, the landmarks of our way.
Knelworth, 1848.
PAUL CLIFFORD.
CHAPTER I.
Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes,
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose,
Who press the downy couch while slaves advance
With timid eye to read the distant glance,
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease
To name the nameless, ever-new disease,
Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
Which real pain and that alone can cure,
How would you bear in real pain to lie
Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
How would you bear to draw your latest breath
Where all that's wretched paves the way to death? --Crabbe.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at
occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which
swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling
along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the
lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest
quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the
police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary
way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a
description correspondent with the appearance of the _quartier_ in which
they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which
did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were
couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to
himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and
discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher,
after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added,
"But if _this_ vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!"
Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the
thing proffered _might_ do as well; and thrusting it into his ample
pocket, he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain
would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the
entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames
Court." Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or
alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy
comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the
door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a
comely rotundity of face and person.
"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the
guest.
"Noa, noa! not exactly; but I thinks as 'ow--"
"Pish, you fool!" cried the woman, interrupting him peevishly. "Vy, it
is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my
boosing-ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So
there's the poor cretur a, raving and a dying, and you--"
"Let I speak!" interrupted Dummie in his turn. "I tells you I vent
first to Mother Bussblone's, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and
evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Bible; and she says,
says she, 'I 'as only a "Companion to the _H_alter," but you'll get a
Bible, I think, at Master Talkins', the cobbler as preaches.' So I goes
to Master Talkins, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the Bible,
--'cause vy? I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a getting it at
the butcher's hover the vay, -'cause vy? The butcher 'll be damned!' So
I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as not a Bible,
but I 'as a book of plays bound for all the vorld just like 'un, and
mayhap the poor cretur may n't see the difference.' So I takes the
plays, Mrs. Margery, and here they be sure_ly!_ And how's poor Judy?"
"Fearsome! she'll not be over the night, I'm a thinking."
"Vell, I'll track up the dancers!"
So saying, Dummie ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance of
which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney,
afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber which
the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray.
The walls were whitewashed, and at sundry places strange figures and
grotesque characters had been traced by some mirthful inmate, in such
sable outline as the end of a smoked stick or the edge of a piece of
charcoal is wont to produce. The wan and flickering light afforded by a
farthing candle gave a sort of grimness and menace to these achievements
of pictorial art, especially as they more than once received
embellishments from portraits of Satan such as he is accustomed to be
drawn. A low fire burned gloomily in the sooty grate, and on the hob
hissed "the still small voice" of an iron kettle. On a round deal table
were two vials, a cracked cup, a broken spoon of some dull metal, and
upon two or three mutilated chairs were scattered various articles of
female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow,
shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked
apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the
gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny),
were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse
rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular
and calm click of which produced that indescribably painful feeling
which, we fear, many of our readers who have heard the sound in a
sick-chamber can easily recall. A large tester-bed stood opposite to
this table, and the looking-glass partially reflected curtains of a faded
stripe, and ever and anon (as the position of the sufferer followed the
restless emotion of a disordered mind) glimpses of the face of one on
whom Death was rapidly hastening. Beside this bed now stood Dummie, a
small, thin man dressed in a tattered plush jerkin, from which the
rain-drops slowly dripped, and with a thin, yellow, cunning physiognomy
grotesquely hideous in feature, but not positively villanous in
expression. On the other side of the bed stood a little boy of about
three years old, dressed as if belonging to the better classes, although
the garb was somewhat tattered and discoloured. The poor child trembled
violently, and evidently looked with a feeling of relief on the entrance
of Dummie. And now there slowly, and with many a phthisical sigh, heaved
towards the foot of the bed the heavy frame of the woman who had accosted
Dummie below, and had followed him, _haud passibus aequis_, to the room
of the sufferer; she stood with a bottle of medicine in her hand, shaking
its contents up and down, and with a kindly yet timid compassion spread
over a countenance crimsoned with habitual libations. This made the
scene,--save that on a chair by the bedside lay a profusion of long,
glossy, golden ringlets, which had been cut from the head of the sufferer
when the fever had begun to mount upwards, but which, with a jealousy
that portrayed the darling littleness of a vain heart, she had seized and
insisted on retaining near her; and save that, by the fire, perfectly
inattentive to the event about to take place within the chamber, and to
which we of the biped race attach so awful an importance, lay a large
gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing with half-shut eyes, and ears that
now and then denoted, by a gentle inflection, the jar of a louder or
nearer sound than usual upon her lethargic senses. The dying woman did
not at first attend to the entrance either of Dummie or the female at the
foot of the bed, but she turned herself round towards the child, and
grasping his arm fiercely, she drew him towards her, and gazed on his
terrified features with a look in which exhaustion and an exceeding
wanness of complexion were even horribly contrasted by the glare and
energy of delirium.
"If you are like _him_," she muttered, "I will strangle you,--I will!
Ay, tremble, you ought to tremble when your mother touches you, or when
_he_ is mentioned. You have his eyes, you have! Out with them,
out,--the devil sits laughing in them! Oh, you weep, do you, little one?
Well, now, be still, my love; be hushed! I would not harm thee! Harm
--0 God, he _is_ my child after all!" And at these words she clasped the
boy passionately to her breast, and burst into tears.
"Coom, now, coom," said Dummie, soothingly; "take the stuff, Judith, and
then ve'll talk over the hurchin!"
The mother relaxed her grasp of the boy, and turning towards the speaker,
gazed at him for some moments with a bewildered stare; at length she
appeared slowly to remember him, and said, as she raised herself on one
hand, and pointed the other towards him with an inquiring gesture,--"Thou
hast brought the book?"
Dummie answered by lifting up the book he had brought from the honest
butcher's.
"Clear the room, then," said the sufferer, with that air of mock command
so common to the insane. "We would be alone!"
Dummie winked at the good woman at the foot of the bed; and she (though
generally no easy person to order or to persuade) left, without
reluctance, the sick chamber.
"If she be a going to pray," murmured our landlady (for that office did
the good matron hold), "I may indeed as well take myself off, for it's
not werry comfortable like to those who be old to hear all that 'ere!"
With this pious reflection, the hostess of the Mug,--so was the hostelry
called,--heavily descended the creaking stairs. "Now, man," said the
sufferer, sternly, "swear that you will never reveal,--swear, I say! And
by the great God whose angels are about this night, if ever you break the
oath, I will come back and haunt you to your dying day!"
Dummie's face grew pale, for he was superstitiously affected by the
vehemence and the language of the dying woman, and he answered, as he
kissed the pretended Bible, that he swore to keep the secret, as much as
he knew of it, which, she must be sensible, he said, was very little. As
he spoke, the wind swept with a loud and sudden gust down the chimney,
and shook the roof above them so violently as to loosen many of the
crumbling tiles, which fell one after the other, with a crashing noise,
on the pavement below. Dummie started in affright; and perhaps his
conscience smote him for the trick he had played with regard to the false
Bible. But the woman, whose excited and unstrung nerves led her astray
from one subject to another with preternatural celerity, said, with an
hysterical laugh, "See, Dummie, they come in state for me; give me the
cap--yonder--and bring the looking-glass!"
Dummie obeyed; and the woman, as she in a low tone uttered something
about the unbecoming colour of the ribbons, adjusted the cap on her head,
and then, saying in a regretful and petulant voice, "Why should they have
cut off my hair? Such a disfigurement!" bade Dummie desire Mrs. Margery
once more to ascend to her.
Left alone with her child, the face of the wretched mother softened as
she regarded him, and all the levities and all the vehemences--if we may
use the word--which, in the turbulent commotion of her delirium, had been
stirred upward to the surface of her mind, gradually now sank as death
increased upon her, and a mother's anxiety rose to the natural level from
which it had been disturbed and abased. She took the child to her bosom,
and clasping him in her arms, which grew weaker with every instant, she
soothed him with the sort of chant which nurses sing over their untoward
infants; but her voice was cracked and hollow, and as she felt it was so,
the mother's eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Margery now reentered; and
turning towards the hostess with an impressive calmness of manner which
astonished and awed the person she addressed, the dying woman pointed to
the child and said,--
"You have been kind to me, very kind, and may God bless you for it! I
have found that those whom the world calls the worst are often the most
_human_. But I am not going to thank you as I ought to do, but to ask of
you a last and exceeding favour. Protect my child till he grows up. You
have often said you loved him,--you are childless yourself,--and a morsel
of bread and a shelter for the night, which is all I ask of you to give
him, will not impoverish more legitimate claimants."
Poor Mrs. Margery, fairly sobbing, vowed she would be a mother to the
child, and that she would endeavour to rear him honestly; though a
public-house was not, she confessed, the best place for good examples.
"Take him," cried the mother, hoarsely, as her voice, failing her
strength, rattled indistinctly, and almost died within her. "Take him,
rear him as you will, as you can; any example, any roof, better than--"
Here the words were inaudible. "And oh, may it be a curse and a-- Give
me the medicine; I am dying."
The hostess, alarmed, hastened to comply; but before she returned to the
bedside, the sufferer was insensible,--nor did she again recover speech
or motion. A low and rare moan only testified continued life, and within
two hours that ceased, and the spirit was gone. At that time our good
hostess was herself beyond the things of this outer world, having
supported her spirits during the vigils of the night with so many little
liquid stimulants that they finally sank into that torpor which generally
succeeds excitement. Taking, perhaps, advantage of the opportunity which
the insensibility of the hostess afforded him, Dummie, by the expiring
ray of the candle that burned in the death-chamber, hastily opened a huge
box (which was generally concealed under the bed, and contained the
wardrobe of the deceased), and turned with irreverent hand over the
linens and the silks, until quite at the bottom of the trunk he
discovered some packets of letters; these he seized, and buried in the
conveniences of his dress. He then, rising and replacing the box, cast a
longing eye towards the watch on the toilet-table, which was of gold; but
he withdrew his gaze, and with a querulous sigh observed to himself: "The
old blowen kens of that, 'od rat her! but, howsomever, I'll take this:
who knows but it may be of sarvice. Tannies to-day may be smash
to-morrow!" [Meaning, what is of no value now may be precious hereafter.]
and he laid his coarse hand on the golden and silky tresses we have
described. "'T is a rum business, and puzzles I; but mum's the word for
my own little colquarren [neck]."
With this brief soliloquy Dummie descended the stairs and let himself out
of the house.